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A new breed of fitness apparel equipped with flexible sensors and microchips for measuring overall physical health­— everything from heartrate and blood pressure to joint injuries— could be less than two years away.

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 A Mesh of Conformal Electronics Embedded Into

a Rubber and Wrapped Around the Tip of a Finger

The thin, stretchy electronic patches for the new athletic gear are being developed by mc10, a Cambridge, Mass., company that has teamed up with Reebok.The idea is that you won't have to buy devices to monitor your body on the move if the sportswear itself contains these electronics. Sensors could also detect specific "biomarkers" in human blood, saliva, sweat or urine that reveal the presence of chemical or biological weapons, radiation from nuclear weapons or even traces of explosives left by a roadside bomb. 

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U.S. military commanders might have the eerie experience of watching their digital battlefield maps bloom with tiny dots indicating locations and numbers of the wounded or killed — a different way of tracking battles aside from using radio reports and video footage from drone surveillance cameras.

 

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Clothing of the Future

Smart clothing similar to what the Pentagon wants already exists in primitive forms. Lab researchers have experimented with special clothing fibers capable of replicating soft, flexible touch screens and batteries, and hope to make soft versions of the tiny transistors at the heart of modern electronics.

 

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The manufacturing of so-called "smart clothes" has ushered in a textile revolution. What makes these clothes "intelligent" is the integration of electronical components. Through the use of new fibres and yarns functional textiles are being produced which can integrate both cosmetic and medical systems. Consequently, smart clothes are items which can "think" and "act", thus protecting the people wearing them.

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The great potential of intelligent clothing lies, among other things, in the recognition and interpretation of the wearers' movements, in the transmission of invisible body signs (such as sweating or trembling) or in the production and storage of energy in the clothes.  In the beginning, intelligent clothing was mainly used in the fields of protective wear, sports, outdoor and fashion. In the meantime, smart clothes have also found their way into the healthcare, routine management and entertainment markets. 

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The Following examples show the great technological standard of functional textiles which are being used already today:


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Heatable Ski Jackets

 

The company GmbH has developed an electrically conductive yarn which is expandable, kink resistant, washable and can even be processed by textile machines. This special yarn called "novonic" is used for heating, as a USB data carrier, to supply electricity and as a sensor. Thus, from the innovative yarn a heatable ski jacket was produced with a textile cable harness. Apart from its warming function, this intelligent jacket is extremely durable and can be washed in traditional washing machines.

 

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Warming Underwear

 

To fight off the cold, warmX GmbH has developed an undershirt which without the use of heated filaments or similar means is self-warming. To this purpose, silver-plated polyamide fibres have been integrated into a knitted fabric, while a mini power controller on the front of the undershirts supplies the required energy. Two warming zones around the kidneys closely stick to the skin of the wearers, thus making them feel comfortable and warm. Despite its special properties the warming undershirt can be machine-washed at 30°.

 

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The jacket that Can See

 

One of the latest developments on the smart clothes market is the GPSoverIP jacket which boasts a lot of features: along with a mobile phone and an MP3 player it also contains features for locating people. To this purpose, the entire electronic equipment of the so-called "GPS eye" for determining and transmitting position data was miniaturised specifically with regard to locating people. The wearers of this innovative jacket thus cannot only be located within buildings with the accuracy of GPS, but also in realtime.

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A Fabric for Protection from Mobile Phone Radiation

A German yarn expert has developed a special fabric that can be integrated in men's outerwear as a protection from mobile phone radiation. This fabric called eBLOCKER is being integrated into the inner pockets of jackets where, due to the high portion of silver used and its special manufacture, it absorbs almost 100% of the electrosmog produced by the mobile phone. However, this does not affect the functioning of the mobile phone.

 

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Fitness Computer within Sports Underwear

The "BeatClip" is a fitness computer with a mobile radio connection which is sewn into sports underwear. In this way it is possible to display on the mobile phone e.g. heart rate signals and other data. In addition, the athletes can send their training data via internet to their home PCs on which they can plan and analyse their fitness program with the help of a special software included in the package.

 

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The Sensoria Fitness Smart Sock and Anklet


At first glance Heapslylon makes a pair of smart socks that mimic many of the data gathering functions of any other fitness tracker on the market. Except that they are socks. And it's tough to imagine one wearing the same pair of sensor-packed socks each day or even wearing socks every day. How is this a good idea? How is this the future of fashion and technology? 

 

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Heapsylon isn't really in the sock business. The socks are made of a special material that the company developed — it is reportedly comfortable, washable and packed with sensors. And that material is the crux of what Heapslyson has developed. The socks are both an effort to put the new material through its paces with the hardest-working piece of clothing in a person's wardrobe, as well as an application to showcase what the material can do.

 

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According to a report from GizmoWatch a couple of years ago, Lunar design's BLU Jacket is a futuristic concept that could make walking billboards a reality.

Lunar Design used organic fabrics containing semiconductors in the BLU Jacket, in order to display your moods through signs and colors.

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Blue Jacket

This BLU Jacket also has a GPS module built into it. So if someone asks you directions, you could theoretically project a map onto your jacket's sleeve through it's flexible display. Or, asks GizmoWatch, "how about getting paid for displaying advertisements on your jacket?"

 

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Thought Helmet

Let's get very futuristic for a minute. Six Revisions references an article in Time from September 2008, which claims that the U.S. Army is actively pursuing "thought helmets" for secure mind-to-mind communication between soldiers. The goal "is a system where entire military systems could be controlled by thought alone. While this kind of technology is still far off, the fact that the military has awarded a $4 million contract to a team of scientists from the University of California at Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland means that we might be seeing prototypes of these systems within the next decade."

 

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Biosensor Underwear

 

RSC Publishing reported recently that US scientists have developed durable biosensors that can be printed directly onto clothing, to allow continuous biomedical monitoring outside hospitals. The aim is to enable constant monitoring of blood pressure and heart rate:  "Joseph Wang and colleagues at the University of California San Diego, La Jolla have developed a method for printing biosensors directly onto clothing. To form the sensors, Wang screen-printed carbon electrode arrays directly onto the elastic bands of mens' underwear. The tight contact and direct exposure to the skin allows hydrogen peroxide and the enzyme NADH, which are both associated with numerous biomedical processes, to be monitored using the sensor, explains Wang."

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Nanofibers


Cornell University's Department of Textiles and Apparel aims to develop fibers that have computing devices in them. An example use case is a shirt "made of cotton threads coated with a thin layer of semiconductor polymers and nanoparticles that conduct electric and can power your cell phone or iPod or monitor your heartbeat, brainwaves, and other functions."  The University is also investigating "textiles that can act as sensors that could be used to detect the presence of hazardous bacteria, such as E. coli or anthrax." A further example is smart clothes made of fibers that can change colors - "one appropriate for daytime business environment, a different one for nighttime socializing."

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Carrie Underwood's Dress Burst Into A Sea Of Butterflies

During Her Grammy Performance in 2013

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